Clear Coatings on Wood

Clear Coatings on Wood HOME

Hello. I’m Steve Smith. You can order this

product from
I’m a paint chemist. Smith & Co.

My producer, the editor of this publication, tells me 1-800-234-0330

I have only a couple thousand words to cover the
subject of how and why clear wood coatings fail,
and what can be done about it.

No problem. I could do it in twice that.

The reason we are starting with how and why they

fail is because you, as contractors, want to give
your customer a clear finish that really lasts, and
help them to understand what is within their
budget. The customer may want a glossy finish, or
low-sheen. The application may be interior or
exterior. There are ways to do all this, and some
products out-perform others. Independent
publications such as The Practical Sailor or
Consumer Reports have tested some few products,
and those tests have been done in some more-or-
less scientific manner and gave reasonably
valuable side-by-side comparisons, but no
discussion of the why of it all. All that is of value
to you as a painting contractor but does not help
you understand how to choose a better product, or
how to get beyond the three-month-to-two-year life
most clear coatings have.

Today, I want to talk to you about some of the

fundamentals of coating design, with the goal of
you becoming more able to produce for your

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (1 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

customer a clear coating that lasts long enough to

satisfy them, and if I get really lucky someone will
have a replacement cursor assembly for my 20”
slide rule. It’s related. Really.

We can understand how clear wood coatings

exposed to the elements
can last for years by learning how and why such
coatings fail. The “why” is three-fold: Water
attacks the coating or the wood, ultraviolet light
(which is an invisible part of both natural sunlight
and interior fluorescent light) does the same, and
the wood substrate moves .

These causes bring about different effects. The

most obvious are yellowing, loss of gloss, tearing
of the coating, cracking and finally flaking of the
coating. Somewhere along the line the wood loses
its originally attractive color and bleaches to gray.

Some of the above result from loss of flexibility,

and this will manifest as a cracking, tearing, or
peeling of the film. The main reason is degradation
by ultraviolet light, which slowly breaks molecular
chains in the coating [a polymer made of many
molecules intertwined and connected]. When this
happens the molecular fragments (called “free
radicals”, more about those later) will glue
themselves onto neighboring polymer chains,
making extra cross-links. These are extra branches
in a chain, like rungs on a ladder. As more cross-
links are made, the coating loses its elongation
capability. That is to say, it becomes stiffer and
cannot stretch as much as the natural expansion of
the wood, and eventually cracks and tears and
flakes. Polyurethanes, traditional varnish and, for
that matter, any clear finish will get more brittle
with age. The reason old, flaking varnish curls
outwards is that the outer surface becomes shorter
than the inner surface due to the extra surface cross-
linking from the ultraviolet light.
There are special chemicals designed to trap and
neutralize these free radicals before they can do

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (2 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

their damage. They are called antioxidants

(something like vitamin-E, actually) and they work
the same way your antioxidant vitamins work to
keep you healthy.

Interestingly enough, conventional varnishes cure

by a chemical reaction between the oil and the
oxygen in the air. This is called oxidation, and the
addition of antioxidants to a conventional varnish
would poison the curing reaction. It is therefore
impossible to add antioxidants to varnish and thus
any varnish will lose its flexibility fairly rapidly
with exposure to the sun. Some chemically cured
coatings such as two-component polyurethanes are
compatible with both ultraviolet absorbers and
antioxidants, and those have the best maintenance
of gloss and flexibility. Versions which are VOC-
compliant are available for high-end applications.
My company has been making such coatings for
over fifteen years.

Evaporation of flexibilizing plasticizers is another

reason coatings lose flexibility with age.
Plasticizers are non-reactive chemicals which some
manufacturers add to a resin to make it less brittle.
Used correctly, this may be a good thing. If an
incorrect [or cheap] plasticizer is used, it will
evaporate with age, as it diffuses out of the
material. I personally have experienced a
significant loss due to exactly this kind of failure.
The sliding part [cursor] on my twenty-inch slide
rule was made with some plastic, which has
shrunken and become brittle with age [my father
bought it for me when I was in High School…I
was the only kid with a 20-inch in a belt scabbard]
and now the cursor is cracked in several pieces and
does not glue back together well……and is very
difficult to use. If you have one you would be
willing to sell, please call me at 1-510-237-5986.

Incidentally, some epoxy products have volatile

plasticizers, also called fugitive, because they go
away. The MSDS may say they contain benzyl

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (3 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

alcohol or benzyl butyl phthalate…..these are two

of the most common.

Where the coating was applied to two adjoining

pieces of wood and bridged over them, relative
motion may tear the film loose from the substrate
without the film itself failing. The visual result of
this is usually a whitish line appearing in the clear
coating over the wood joint. As the coating lost its
flexibility, it became stiffer, and stretched only
with more difficulty. Eventually the force required
to stretch the coating over the joint exceeded the
shear strength of the wood or the peel strength of
the coating’s adhesive bond to the wood, and the
coating tore loose some amount either side of the
joint.

Water causes a loss of film strength….it will tear

more easily, and stretch less before it fails. The
reasons are technical, and have to do with chemical
reactions between water and some kinds of
plastics, acrylics and some others, which lead to
decomposition of the material. The chemist who
formulates the coating would use better-quality
materials to make a coating more resistant to this
sort of degradation. Some urethanes, some
epoxides, and the reaction products of certain
natural oils (such as linseed oil or tung oil) or other
kinds of resins called alkyds are more resistant to
water than some other materials such as acrylic
resins or some polyester resins. Fiberglass boats
develop gel-coat blisters which are a result of water
attacking that polyester resin.

Water may cause a chemical decomposition or

swelling of the wood beneath the coating, allowing
the bond between the wood and the coating to fail.
Ultraviolet light also causes chemical
decomposition of wood.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and so

it is necessary to not only improve the varnish or
other clear coating to obtain a longer life, but to

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (4 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

improve the stability of the wood surface. This

gives any topcoat something better to stick to.

There are many different definitions of the word

“primer”, depending on the specific functions
being performed. Manufacturers of clear coatings
usually design some sealer-primer, adhesion-
enhancing primer or wood-stabilizing primer for
use with their coating products. The oldest and
simplest of these, used with any varnish, was to
thin the first coat of varnish with mineral spirits
and allow it to soak into the wood. This is
commonly done today.

Whatever the recommendation of the topcoat

manufacturer for surface prep or primer, follow it.

My company manufactures a primer for wood

which is compatible with not only our clear finish,
but other manufacturers’ alkyd or latex paints or
clear coatings or varnishes. It is called Clear
Penetrating Epoxy Sealer™ and also
MultiWoodPrime™, and impregnates the wood
substrate with a water-repellent resin system made
largely from the natural resins of wood itself. It
bonds the wood surface fibers together and into the
wood substrate, where there was open porosity.
This gives a stronger surface, better attached to the
bulk of the wood itself, and thus creates better
water resistance of the wood substrate as well as
better topcoat adhesion. It bonds the coating to the
wood with a tough, flexible adhesive , and this
bond is stronger than the bond of varnish or other
finishes directly to bare wood. Thus, the sealer
glues down the topcoat, while the ultraviolet
absorbers in the topcoat protect both wood and
sealer from the sunlight. You can learn more about
Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer or
MultiWoodPrime by clicking on the link.

Wood consists of hollow fibers of cellulose (a kind

of sugar, very tasty to fungus and termites) glued
together by a material called lignin. Lignin is a

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (5 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

very hard, strong resin (a phenolic resin,

chemically a half-brother to the resorcinol glue
used to make plywood) which is very resistant to
water, but is decomposed very quickly by
ultraviolet light.

Ultraviolet light attacks almost everything. All

organic compounds, whether synthetic or natural,
will eventually be attacked and broken down by
ultraviolet light. Even some of the best urethane
paints will lose about half their gloss in two years
of outdoor exposure. It is not enough to make a
clear coating which is not much degraded by
ultraviolet light, as such a coating would simply
transmit the ultraviolet light through to the wood
underneath.

Therefore, ultraviolet absorbers were invented. The

most effective are chemical compounds, which act
as magnets for ultraviolet light. When a molecule
of this absorber material captures a photon (light
comes in small units; they are called photons) it
converts the energy of the ultraviolet photon into
heat. When it does this, the molecule vibrates. The
phenomenon is very much like ringing a bell. We
know that if you strike a bell often enough, the bell
will crack. The molecules of ultraviolet absorber
wear out in the same way. Eventually they will die
and no longer absorb ultraviolet light. The more
ultraviolet absorbers the manufacturer puts in the
clear coatings, the longer the coatings will last,
assuming that high-quality ingredients are used and
the coating itself is correctly designed.

Clear coatings containing ultraviolet absorbers

must be applied to some minimum predictable film
thickness, so that there is enough ultraviolet
absorber chemicals over the wood to afford enough
protection to the wood to obtain good life and color
stability for the wood. When the ultraviolet
absorbers burn out, the wood will lose its color,
becoming gray.

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (6 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]

Clear Coatings on Wood

Besides absorbers, another kind of ultraviolet

protection is small particles of some minerals.
They are small enough to pass most visible light
but big enough to scatter and reflect most of the
shorter-wavelength ultraviolet light. They never
burn out, but they have the disadvantage that as
one adds more or makes a thicker film, there is a
noticeable haziness or blurring of the wood
underneath.

Sometimes it is desirable to stain wood before a

clear coating is applied. In general, waterborne
stains are compatible with waterborne clear
finishes, whereas solvent-borne stains must be used
with solvent-borne topcoats.

Well, I see by the bulging red veins on my editor’s

neck that I’m about at the word limit, so I want to
thank you for your attention and I trust this has
been useful for you.

One last thing, in case you are wondering…….you

may have noticed I did not say how manufacturers
keep coatings from losing their gloss. It’s true. I
didn’t. I’m a paint chemist. We have our secrets.

Copyright © 2005 Steve Smith all rights reserved

http://www.fiveyearclear.com/CCOW.html (7 of 12) [11/27/2007 9:04:17 PM]